Legacy Sport, a health and fitness Community Interest Company for young people, originally applied to the Big Potential programme with social franchising in mind. However, through participating in the programme they soon found themselves on an alternative journey of growth.

Their story

Established in 2011, Legacy Sport CIC started trading in Kirklees with a £1,000 pot of money, one full-time instructor & two part-time staff. Their cumulative turnover has recently just passed the £500,000 mark, with all profits re-invested into PE, Sport & Health in their local community. They have five key services including their sports academy, cycling schemes and school support programmes.

With 35% of children leaving primary school being either overweight or obese, the health and wellbeing of young people, or ‘physical literacy’ as Legacy Sport define it, is a growing concern.

How we helped

Legacy applied to Big Potential to work out if social franchising was a realistic and sustainable next step for their organisation; an option that would allow them to join a network and increase their impact.

After choosing to work with Fresh Management Solutions as their support provider, Legacy were encouraged to re-examine their own financial processes.

Their grant paid for the provider to help them create new milestones and modify their budget structure. Legacy were able to build a better understanding of the risks and rewards of social franchising and what it would mean for their business.

Big Potential also helped the sports and fitness organisation get to grips with using simple but powerful social impact reports.

What was the outcome?

Legacy soon realised that, in its current state, social franchising wasn’t a viable model for their organisation. Instead, they set out to develop Sporting Age – an online platform for schools to teach about the value of living a healthy lifestyle. The Big Potential-enabled scoping work helped increase Legacy’s attractiveness to investors, resulting in a £40,000 investment from Key Fund to make Sporting Age a reality.

Following on from Big Potential, Legacy continued their social investment journey with the Impact Management Programme in order to build on what they had already learned and fine-tune their impact.

They attended a training workshop to help them distinguish between generic and meaningful impact and received expert advice on how they should be recording their effect on their community.

“We’re proud of our achievements to date and have a real aspiration to replicate this impact in other geographical territories. The Big Potential and Impact Management programmes have been invaluable in helping to determine efficient business models to facilitate this and also how to measure real meaningful impact”

Shaun Fox, Chief Executive, Legacy Sport

The Impact Management Programme has enabled Legacy to further develop their ‘Bikeability’ service – a cycling training program which so far has given over 900 young people an opportunity to get fit, build road confidence, access sustainable transport and has even been shown to improve behaviour in schools!

Now looking to scale ‘Bikeability’ at a national level, Legacy have found themselves pedalling towards a bright and ambitious future. A future they wouldn’t have been able to access without their initial curiosity about social investment.